The year is 2009, and little Johnny and Jane America are enjoying the technological fruits of the 21st Century. Biologists are curing world hunger by growing apples on the backs of lab rats! Chemists are developing newer and better cigarettes every day! Physicists have not only split the atom so long ago, they’ve forgotten where they put the pieces and are trying to haphazardly stitch it back together! And our computer scientists are finding more efficient ways to order Pizza Hut through wireless, atmospheric Internet signals!

With so much science happening all around us everyday, it would seem only natural that our world leaders would embrace it, rather than stand in its way like those nostalgia-burdened, back-thinking Luddites that revolted against Skynet in the better parts of the Terminator saga. Yet, we see this happening all the time.

For example, did you know that Congressman Anthony Weiner, a self-professed man of the people and current candidate for New York City mayor, is actually standing in the way of progress? He recently announced a call to halt the transfer of television signal from analog to digital. He says he has your best interests in mind, America, by postponing the transition that would require the purchase of a $30 converter box for those “old-fashioned” types that haven’t upgraded to cable.

Of course, we all know that digital cable, with all those ones and zeroes, provides a much clearer and crisper picture, and that even our elderly citizens, the ones least likely to have upgraded to a “newfangled” set, can appreciate the more pristine view of the buxom box-top femmes and mangled limbs that are so prevalent in our modern pop culture arena. If they are going to have a window into the outside world, it might as well be streak free. Think of that friendly digital code like it was a bottle of Windex!

How could Weiner ask us to give up our science? It’s as though he’s asking us to stop using fire because not everyone can afford to buy wood! Stay strong America, because the tenacious steamroller that is progress will steadily but slowly bring down all that stand in its way, be they congressmen, holy men, and even, in an unfortunate circumstance, you and I!